The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano published a stirring editorial warning to Germany that if Nazi paganism were not checked, the blood of Catholic priests might be shed as it was in Spain. The Reich, it went on to say, had made "a fatal union of the State with forces hostile to Christianity."

Another of the Reich's active unions is with the insurgents under Franco in Spain. German troops and German aviators are working hand in glove with Franco and Mussolini to establish in that land hegemony controlled by Der Fuehrer, Il Duce and, as long as he carries out orders, EL Caudillo. But in the assumption that things equal to the same thing are equal, axiomatically, to each other, the Vatican has only harm to fear from the establishment of fascism in Spain. Franco's masters both have told the Pope where to get off; yet the Vatican has extended de facto recognition to the insurgent government at Salamanca.

It does not make sense, any more than expressions of concord between Germany and Japan, traditional enemies, jibe with the admitted presence of a German military adviser on the staff of every Chinese army division. The trouble is, of course, that Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan and the Vatican all take the specter of communism so seriously that their inter-relations are about to be involved in complexity. In running with those fascist hounds, the Vatican is likely to find itself the hunted hare. The absurd part of it all is that in Russia religion has been made semi-respectable again.